"He was thinking about a separate incident that did not even occur in Michigan. It occurred in Denver. It had to do with a book he was reading, and he just tripped over his words, he says. And did not mean to infer that wolves are showing no fear of humans. In fact, we checked, and there's no such incident that has been recorded like that in the city of Ironwood. And Adam acknowledges that he made a mistake on that," said Barnes.

One farmer, many wolf kill reports

Barnes also writes about other problems with the argument for a hunt, including the fact that one farmer in Michigan's Upper Peninsula "accounted for more cattle killed and injured than all other farmers in the years the DNR reviewed."

That discovery first came from Nancy Warren of the National Wolf Watch Coalition. She pushed the MDNR for more information on wolf depredation reports. She got the information last July, according to Michigan Radio's Rina Miller:

Warren learned that cattle farmer John Koski reported 96 head of livestock were killed by wolves over a three-year period. She says that's 80 percent of the total of 120 livestock reported killed in the region during that time period. "When you take out the Koski farm, there was very little depredation total," Warren says.

Koski received more than $30,000 from the state for these reported wolf kills, Warren said. She suspected dead carcasses left on Koski's farm likely attracted wolves to his property.

There are pelvises and too many other bleached bones to count. They are the remains of wolf kills, he says. Some suspect they could also be at least partly from natural die-off. Either way, they are not supposed to be here. State law requires animal remains be buried within 24 hours.

Barnes reports that the farmer has never been cited for these violations, and one state official said of Koski that "we're kind of washing our hands of him."

Watch MLive for more reports this week.

In the meantime, 1,200 license holders will have from Nov. 15 through the end of the year to take the quota of 43 wolves in these areas:

Credit State of Michigan

What will happen after these wolves are killed?

It's anybody's guess.

Last December, leading wolf biologist Rolf Peterson told us that a very specific hunt targeting wolves in a small area could reduce wolf-human conflicts, but a public hunt could add to the problem. It could split wolf packs into smaller packs and then increase reproduction:

"It’s sort of if you kill one wolf, two come to the funeral. I mean that’s just a common sense way of expressing the ability of wolves to respond to any sort of increase in mortality," says Peterson.

*This post has been updated to reflect what Adam Bump told reporter John Barnes.

You can listen to today's Environment Report above or read the story below.

Governor Rick Snyder signed a law yesterday afternoon that will allow a state wolf hunt in the Upper Peninsula.

Later today, Michigan’s Natural Resources Commission is expected to vote on whether to authorize the hunt. That decision could have an effect on one town on the far western edge of the Upper Peninsula.

Ironwood is about as far west as you can go in the Upper Peninsula. This town of about 5,000 is a small town with a big wolf problem.